DDA Ltd

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1993 - 1997

 DDA in Hounslow was a very small company compared to British Aerospace. It employed at least 60 people including the shop floor workers. They designed and manufactured sound desks for the music industry which was all very new to me!

There were two associates for the company Dave Dearden and Gareth Davies
Dave Dearden, was an excellent Designer and Gareth Davies acted as the main Boss

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I worked in the R&D Department where I was trained up  to generate
  and modify Printed Circuit Diagrams. It was technical and I enjoyed it  very much!  There were many projects I completed such as the 
QII Monitor and CS8 Console which were quite challenging!

Again I was the only female amongst the designers and engineers in our 
office. However the chaps were all friendly  and Gerald Squire was our manager.

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One of my PCB boards

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Alwyn Fernandes liaising with clients

A young chap called Alwyn spent most of his time training me on all
   the aspects of Schematic and PCB drawings. He was an electronics engineer and an expert on all computer software.

I appreciated his help and assistance so much that eventually he became my 
future husband!!!

All consoles were manufactured on time. Alwyn and I worked very hard to strict deadlines!

We used a package called Vutrax for PCB drawings and    for Schematic drawings. 

All the tracks involved 45 deg. to generate these boards.
I used to become engrossed in my boards so much that I used to have dreams about them after I got home. Everything in life 
to me, became 45 degrees!!!!


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Glen testing one of the consoles

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Dave Smith - one of the Engineers


Few more consoles parts to order.....


Brian - our purchasing man.


Martin and John discuss the consoles


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On my lunch break at last!

In 1996, things were looking bleak for DDA, because our sister  company called Klark-Teknik decided to buy our products and take our staff!! 
This company was based in Kidderminster therefore a few redundancies was on the agenda. 
Gradually the shop-floor was cleared out as well as the workers. 

 Luckily Alwyn was headhunted by his previous company, Avolites and therefore left in November 1996

Remaining together at DDA would have been an unpromising future for us, so I stayed on for another year.

 After Alwyn's departure I had to be in charge of the design of all PCB Consoles alongside with Dave Dearden, the director. I was involved in the design of the DDA CS12 console - stage monitor desk and was pleased to say that everything went smoothly! 

There were many other duties I had to take on after Alwyn left, such as the parts library and all its intricacies!
And not to forget Gerbering the files. That was another  stressful task too as they were crucial for the manufacturers to begin their process! 

Sadly many staff had now left and I also decided to terminate my job with the company in August 1997.


Consoles and workers on the shopfloor

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1997 - Temping days!

After having become pregnant in September 1997 we were quite overjoyed with the news. It was the right timing, being out of employment, however I preferred to work and was quite fit enough to do so and luckily I had no morning sickness!


I tried some temping jobs, such as the Royal Marsden Hospital in Kensington as a Receptionist, followed by the Office of Fair Trading in London.

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